The Caretaker. MTI Video. (Release Date: 2/23/2010). Reviewed by Brian Kirst
MTI’s latest horror offering, The Caretaker, is a must for all who love to outfit themselves in the standard slasher stripes while also draping themselves with a few twists along the way, of course.
On Homecoming Night (which is also Halloween, naturally) 3 young high school guys (the jock, the sensitive and the dweeb) take their dates (the cheating ex, the new girl and the appreciative freshman) to an abandoned house (with a mysterious past) in a rotting fruit orchard. Of course, the resident’s former caretaker is not a legend – but a real flesh and blood killer – resulting in much murder and personal revelations before the night is over.
Gloriously low budget (that’s a high school?), The Caretaker, works most effectively as a showcase for the name performers in the production. Jennifer Tilly works kooky magic as a wannabe reality star teacher (with fairly significant screen time) while Jeepers Creepers’ Jonathan Breck provides some sensual perversion as a mysterious limo driver and Judd Nelson nicely underplays his supposedly concerned father role. Writer Jackie Olson also works some new ideas into a tried and true form by signifying ultimate demises by a rolling grapefruit and having the killer sport a fruit picker as his primary weapon. The kids, as since the original Friday the 13th, are also incredibly attractive with Andrew St. John’s magnificent abs and (the very fun and energetic) Lola Davidson’s perfect breasts taking primary focus (in separate scenes) in the opening moments.
As for the gore factor, while there are some nice torso gashes in the victims post-kill, for the most part The Caretaker is a relatively bloodless affair (with most violence happening off screen) which might provoke hardcore fans but may be perfect for the new generation (particularly young women) that Olsen seems to be trying to court to the horror genre – a very worthy effort indeed.
